Are you a respected director in Hollywood? Do you want your next film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture? Here’s what you need to do – focus less on the quality of the film and more on making the film something that Oscar voters like. As demonstrated in many Best Picture winners, but especially in 1995’s Best Picture winner, Braveheart.

First, make sure your film is based on a true story. Now, don’t let this prohibit you in your vision of the film. As long as you keep a few choice names and events, you can get away with pretty much anything you want in your movie. Sure, people will criticize the film for being historically inaccurate, but that doesn’t matter. Braveheart was definitely historically inaccurate, but Oscar voters didn’t care.

Next, you want to make sure your movie is three hours long. (More or less.) If you need help padding out the time, try having long drawn out conversations that do very little to advance the plot. I should also take this time to mention that your movie should be filmed somewhere where they have a lot of impressive-looking landscapes. Make sure to hire a good director of photography who takes a bunch of nice shots of these landscapes. And get a composer who can write some good music. If your film includes shots of beautiful landscapes with beautiful music, then people will consider your movie to be beautiful by default.

Oh, and we can’t forget about the acting. If Braveheart has taught us anything, it’s that starring in your own movie is a good way to get votes. And if you spend most of the movie showing off what a great real life person the hero is, you’re basically directing a movie about how you are the greatest person in the world. Which seems like the most egotistical thing in the world to do, but according to the media, it’s far more egotistical to quote your own movie in the acceptance speech (Seriously, what’s with the Cameron hate?) Don’t forget to fill your ensemble with mediocre actors in an attempt to make you look better. After all, that’s exactly what Mel Gibson did here.

As you can gather, I did not like this movie too much.

In fact, the only reason why I give this three stars instead of two and a half is because the film actually manages to be hilariously bad. Yes, you heard it right here. A film that won the Oscar for Best Picture actually comes close to falling into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. I mean, the effects and makeup look like a homemade movie. The blood and gore is so obviously fake. All that’s left is for somebody to carelessly leave their car in the background… Braveheart Car

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Phew, I just got back from watching a Best Picture winner that was longer than it needed to be and was so obviously Oscar bait. So tell me, what’s next?

…Oh.